Since 2013, the most offensive and compelling fundraising campaigns of the year have been awarded through the Radi-Aid Awards.

- This year’s finalists show that poverty, migration crisis and trafficking can be presented in creative and nuanced manners that contribute to engagement and enlightenment. But the worst examples – which might as well could have come straight from the 1980s – are unfortunately still out there, depicting oversimplifications, stereotypes and celebrities as spokespersons for the poor, says Beathe Øgård, President of the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH), who arranges the annual event.

British celebrities in the spotlight

This year, British fundraising videos were particularly on the spot. Artist Ed Sheeran and actors Tom Hardy and Eddie Redmayne participate in videos from Comic Relief and Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), all of whom are nominated to the least prestigious prize of «Rusty Radiator».

According to the jury, Ed Sheeran’s video is basically about himself, and reinforces the stereotype of “the white savior”, as all the three British finalists do. Fundraising campaigns about hunger catastrophes are not easy to make, but the way DEC videos depict these issues is unnecessarily oversimplified.

- Among the nominations sent from people from all over the world, there were many fundraising videos about the hunger crisis in East Africa and Yemen that were not considered bad after all. They manage to communicate an emotional and important message about the need, without using stereotypical and graphic images with countless of nameless people, and without the white hero telling the story. This shows that it is possible to present the issue in a better way, says Øgård.

The video "Batman", made by War Child Holland, is nominated for the Golden Radiator Award. (Screenshot)

​ Promoting the good examples

The Radi-Aid Awards are also about promoting the good communication examples in the international development sector, which the four finalists of the «Golden Radiator» show. They portray issues such as the migration crisis, long term development issues and sexual slavery in a nuanced and informative way.

- The goal with the awards is to promote more creativity and innovation in fundraising communication in the international development sector. There has been a lot of positive changes in the last years in this field. We can see that from the finalists of the “Golden Radiator” category, and the bad examples have increasingly become more difficult to find, says Øgård.

The Radi-Aid Awards ceremony will be held on December 7 at 8 PM (GMT+1), with a special live streaming on the Radi-Aid facebook page.

Published 23.11.2017

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